


Magical/Mental

by Aurënfaie (Aurenfaie)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Boys Kissing, M/M, Magic, Magician Adam Parrish, Mystery, Post-The Raven King, minor trk spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 10:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11872905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurenfaie/pseuds/Aur%C3%ABnfaie
Summary: It looked like a shadowy hand pressed to the base of Adam's skull. It hadn't been there long, Ronan decided, not when they'd been sharing a bed just a few nights ago before Adam went back to Saint Agnes.[Adam is made of mysteries that aren't meant to be solved]





	Magical/Mental

**Author's Note:**

> if I lose my mental, just hold my hand  
> even if you don't understand

It looked like a shadowy hand pressed to the base of Adam's skull.

It hadn't been there long, Ronan decided, not when they'd been sharing a bed just a few nights ago before Adam went back to Saint Agnes. The palm ended with his hairline, with just a hint of wrist growing beyond. Adam’s skin was dark enough that most people wouldn’t notice it on first glance. His hair had gotten long enough that Ronan was tempted to help him buzz it off, but it hid the worst of it. It looked like a bruise, with mottled edges around an odd shade of purple or blue or red. But Ronan had seen plenty of bruises on Adam's skin, and none had ever been like this. Plus, he didn't think anyone out there had fingers that long. They were long and slim and curled up into Adam's hair past his crown. It had taken a good bit of combing through Adam's hair trying to hunt down the marks, pulling it this way and that while Adam hissed and swatted at him. The skin there was lighter, the hand clearer and more terrifying. Ronan almost thought he could see the bulge of knuckles as he dug into Adam’s hair, but Adam elbowed him off before he could investigate further.

The mark didn't hurt, Ronan learned, but Adam described the sensation of having it touched even with soft fingertips like having the teeth of a fork dragged across his skin. Not painful, but not pleasant either. Sensitive, Ronan decided. Weird, he also decided.

Of all the things that had happened to them and around them, a strange handprint wasn't the most alarming. So far, it hadn't actually done anything other than appear. For Ronan, this was enough. For Adam, it was barely a bump in the road. Adam couldn't hear or understand Cabeswater anymore (because it was _gonegonegone_ , Adam would wake up muttering in the night, along with everything that made Adam fit in and everything that made Adam special, and now he was just Adam, and it was never enough), simply because the forest he'd made a deal with wasn't there anymore, so things were otherwise more normal than they'd been in months.

That didn't stop Ronan from peeking at the mark whenever he could, watching for changes, fearing the worst. It looked menacing, but Adam was more concerned with covering it up than finding the reason. He hadn’t had many bruises lately, but he was sure that a coworker would say something if they spotted this one. Gone were his usual worn t-shirts in favor of a few of Declan’s old button-downs smuggled out of the Barns after Adam spent the better part of an hour fretting about hiding the mark. Ronan had dumped the shirts on top of him in the middle of the night while he slept, which he was sure had scared Adam more than the bruise mark. Adam wasn’t exactly practical about that kind of thing.

With the handprint hidden, Adam had given up on trying to make sense of anything. He had better things to worry about. School, college applications, work, making free time to crash at the Barns without drawing too much attention to the thing growing between him and Ronan. That, and Adam couldn't see the damned thing. It was on the back of his neck, after all, and it only seemed to bother him when his nervous habit or rubbing the back of his neck came up. Even then, he seemed to accept it like another ache in his life. He didn’t have to stare at it the way Ronan did.

  

* * *

“Man, what if it’s aliens?”

Adam didn’t like that theory. He glared at Ronan over his shoulder and turned back to the application page. Ronan let him “borrow" Matthew’s old computer, in the near pristine condition expected of a boy not dreamed to be full and messy. When they turned on the computer for the first time and found it almost empty, save a few family photos and assignments, the browser history amounting to little more interesting than “best tubing spots in Virginia”, Ronan had almost turned it off and thrown it away. Adam needed it though. He didn’t even need to format it.

“Really though. Would you even be surprised?”

“No,” Adam said glumly. His shoulders were tight with stress as he hunched over the keyboard and read all of the fine print. The handprint peeked up over the collar of his shirt and disappeared into his thick hair. From where Ronan was sitting at the end of his bed, watching Adam at the desk littered with dream objects and shreds of paper Chainsaw had decorated them with, it looked like the hand was pushing his head down. “But it wasn’t aliens.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” he said, shifting his shoulders until the collar of his shirt lifted off his skin. “Not aliens.” 

  

* * *

The mark did change, growing into an entire arm that extended past the collar of Adam's shirt and between his shoulders in a long, straight line. The blurred edges spread almost two inches to either side of his spine. It was uncomfortable at worst, and entirely ignorable at best, according to Adam. 

For Ronan, it was unsettling. There was a goddamned spirit hand bruise on Adam's back. Adam would flinch away if Ronan touched it. Not, he assured Ronan, because he was hurt, but because he didn’t like how it felt. Ronan tried to get him to explain, but Adam couldn’t form the words. “Like goosebumps,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “Like nails on a chalkboard, or the way your bones hurt when it gets too cold.” Ronan knew all of those feelings, but couldn’t figure out what they had to do with each other. He wanted to touch it and touch it until it made sense, but Adam wanted to pretend nothing was happening at all, so he let him.

Gansey did not. By this time, he had absolutely noticed the hand and had plenty to say about it too, an endless flurry of theories. Adam didn’t listen to any of them.

“I appreciate the concern,” he said, “But it’s not doing anything, and it’s finals season and I have two college applications due on Friday and a shift tonight.” Adam shrugged and gave Gansey a look that said “You can see my priorities here”, and Gansey crossed his arms and gave Adam a look that said “No I really don’t”, but he didn’t say anything else. At least, not to Adam.

Ronan, on the other hand, had somehow become the Adam-whisperer. Whenever Adam was being difficult or seemed off balance, Gansey asked Ronan to take care of it. He suspected Gansey knew something about what was going on and suspected Adam had been the one to say something. Gansey was smart, but generally not when it came to people, and Ronan sure as hell hadn’t said anything. But now Ronan was in charge of making sure Adam took care of himself, and it wasn’t the worst chore. It gave him an excuse to show up at St. Agnes after Adam’s shifts with burgers, and if he stayed overnight, Gansey wouldn’t say anything. It also meant that he had to sit through Gansey’s rambling and pretend like each prospect wasn’t terrifying.

“Maybe the demon isn’t really dead after all. Maybe it left something inside Adam.” Gansey was pacing a hole down the main street of his paper Henrietta. “We don’t know how these things work.”

He stopped then stomped back to his desk and shuffled through the teetering pile of books stacked next to it. For almost a month after Gansey was dead and Glendower was even deader, the books were gone, vanished from Monmouth. Everything was clean, save the dried leaves falling free of the mint plants Gansey couldn’t seem to remember to water. The magic of the warehouse was gone. Then one day Ronan came back to Monmouth after a week of sleeping at the Barns, and once at St. Agnes, to find Blue sleeping in Gansey’s bed. Gansey too, which was weird on its own. Ronan had slammed the door so hard that the entire building shook and went back to St. Agnes. The books came back after that, but they were different. Instead of dusty green hardbacks with gold imprinted text, the new books were glossy and crinkled, shitty paperbacks from the used bookstore. Some of them looked like crime novels, but had titles like “Hostage to the Devil” and “The Incorruptibles”. Ronan guessed this meant Gansey had a new obsession, and he wasn’t happy about it.

“I read some books about possession and demonology, just in case. The better sources dismiss at least some of it as mental illness—you don’t think Adam is mentally ill, do you?” Ronan shrugged. He didn’t want to think about it. Gansey shook his head and continued. “It’s difficult to decide what’s real and what’s not in these kinds of books. We didn’t know to trust psychics until recently, so who knows if exorcists are right too. They’re mostly from a Catholic viewpoint, you know, so they’re a little…I don’t mean it like that.”

“I didn’t say anything."

“Well, I didn’t mean it like that. And I don’t think it’s the Devil that has its grips on Adam, just a demon. A forest thing, or an ancient thing, I don’t know.” He pulled a red book from the bottom of the pile and held it up. The cover read “History of Witchcraft and Demonology”. “This makes me think this is, I don’t know, one of those things that happens, and that we should hunt Adam down. It’s garbage, of course. The man took everything he read at face value and didn’t seem to have a doubtful thought in his head.” Gansey shuffled into the books again and pulled out another red book, this one decorated with oversaturated medieval artwork. The title was too small for Ronan to read. “This one is absolutely terrifying. It was published in the 15th century and people actually used it to try to hunt down and kill demons and witches. Or at least, what they had to have assumed were demons and witches.”

Ronan groaned and stepped forward to snatch the book out of Gansey’s hand. He flipped through the pages until a page title caught his eye. “There’s a manual for torture in here.”

“Yes, I know. Like I said,” Gansey took the book back, “Terrifying.”

“So all you’ve established is that if Adam is possessed, we’re going to have to kill him.”

“No! Of course not!” Gansey held up his hand to placate Ronan and tossed the book behind him. “But if he’s possessed, this is way out of our league. We’ll need to make new contacts, find experts, maybe ask the psychics for help—”

“Gansey, no.”

“Ronan, we—”

“Gansey, he’s not possessed. Your fucking theory is going to get him killed by some lunatic with a silver stake.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be a silver stake, it would be—”

“Don’t care. You’re not talking to any exorcists.”

Gansey deflated and sunk onto his mattress. Ronan almost felt bad for telling him they weren’t going to kill Adam.

“What are we supposed to do, then?” He looked up at Ronan, more miserable than Ronan had seen him in a while. “Just wait and hope it’s nothing bad?”

Ronan didn’t like the sound of that any more than Gansey did, but he didn’t have a better solution. Adam wasn’t in pain, wasn’t acting strangely or hurting anyone. As far as strange incidents went, this one was benign enough for the time being. Adam had things to do anyway, a life to plan, and Ronan wasn’t going to be the one to get in the way.

“We just wait and hope Adam will say something if it is something bad.”

  

* * *

“It’s Cabeswater.”

Ronan took a long drag from his cigarette and shook his head. “Cabeswater is gone.”

“Yeah,” said Blue as she kicked out her short legs and slouched against the steps up into Monmouth. Another cigarette dangled from her lips, burning slowly from the end as she refused to actually inhale the smoke. It looked cool, she’d told Ronan, but she didn’t want lung cancer. Gansey was going to throw a fit when he found out. “But it’s also still here. Gansey’s here, after all. And you started dreaming again, didn’t you?"

“Yeah.”

“So maybe it’s not all gone. It wasn’t a tangible thing in the first place, so maybe it’s in a different form now.”

“Tangible? Man, you’ve been hanging out with Gansey too much.”

Blue gave him a strange look, like she wanted to snap something back at him but thought better of it. Ronan had a good idea of what that something could be and was grateful she didn’t say anything.

“Well, it gave itself up for Gansey because it loved him, but if loved Adam too. I don’t think it would want to leave Adam alone.” She pulled the cigarette from her mouth and watched it burn between her fingertips. With her wild hair and jeans more holes than denim, Ronan thought he saw some of what Gansey saw in her. She was so much of everything in such a small package. Good boys like Gansey weren’t supposed to like girls like her. Bad boys like Ronan were supposed to like girls like her…or girls in general. He almost laughed at the thought that Gansey and Adam were probably the best matches of all of them, if it weren’t for Adam’s contention about money and Gansey’s absolute inability to keep his foot out of his mouth regarding money.

“It didn’t leave Adam alone,” Ronan groused and jammed the butt of his cigarette into the pavement before lighting another. “We’re still here.”

“We are, but this is Adam we’re talking about. He probably already knows what’s going on, but he’s not good at…uh…” Blue groaned and rubbed her face. Her cheap eyeliner smudged at the corners, but Ronan doubted she cared. It made her look punk. “You know how he is. When things are bad, he isolates himself. He’s not going to come to us when he’s lonely or struggling.”

Only he did. Adam had been staying at the Barnes at least two nights a week for the last few weeks, and had invited Ronan to St. Agnes every Friday night without fail since the end of summer. Adam worked Friday nights until 9, so Ronan would pick him up from the auto shop with burgers sitting in the passenger seat and they would watch movies on Ronan’s phone (and later, Matthew’s old laptop). It was the one night that Adam wouldn’t study, wouldn’t worry about when he had to wake up the next morning, wouldn’t let life’s many demands control him. Increasingly often, Ronan would share the tiny mattress with him.

“Ok, so if it’s Cabeswater, what is it doing to him?”

Blue looked serious for a moment, then said “Giving him a hand?”

Ronan almost punched her.

  

* * *

Ronan had been good about not touching the handprint. He never liked hurting Adam, no matter how much Adam insisted this didn’t hurt. Adam still squirmed away anytime he accidentally brushed it, and had once, late at night, confessed that even the feeling of his shirt touching it sometimes drove him to distraction. As far as harmless things went, this mark was such a frustrating mystery that its mere existence drove Ronan to distraction.

But Ronan was human, and from time to time, he caught himself a breath away from touching the mark. Once, he didn’t catch himself at all.

  

* * *

Ronan liked kissing Adam. He was pretty sure Adam liked kissing him too, even if they never talked about it or what it meant. They were on the same page, probably. Ronan had never looked at anyone else, and now whenever he looked at Adam, Adam was looking back. Blue had commented on it once, and he knew Gansey wanted to, but Blue likely bullied him into keeping his mouth shut. She was smart like that.

They kissed a lot. Ronan should probably have felt guilty about doing so directly over the church, but this was a different kind of worship. Doing this was good for his soul in places that church didn’t touch. It made him feel brave enough to take on the many pains of his life. Still, he hadn’t done the one brave thing he wished he had. But Adam did. Crammed together in Adam’s bed, moonlight streaming through the open window, Adam took the first step they’d been avoiding for months.

“Hey Ronan, I like you."

Ronan’s first thought was to throw it back in Adam’s face. It was a horrible impulse, the kind of knee-jerk reaction to be as horrible as possible that maintained his self-image so well. But Adam wasn’t looking at him, was looking down at the spot where their legs tangled together. He pulled at a loose thread on Ronan’s shirt and rolled it between his fingers. 

Ronan wondered if Adam had said anything like this before. Then, he remembered Blue and felt a strange kind of jealousy. Of course he’d told Blue that he liked her. He liked pretty girls and did what he thought pretty girls liked. Ronan thought about the flowers he’d teased Adam endlessly about. Somehow, he thought this was better than flowers. After all, Blue didn’t even kiss Adam. She didn’t know what she missed. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I bet you do.” Adam laughed like he was covering up his disappointment and Ronan fumbled to catch him.

“I like you too.” His hands felt hot and he let them fall limp so he didn’t make a bigger ass of himself. “You know. In the way that counts.”

“Ok.” Adam settled for tugging at the loose thread. 

The sound of breaths grew between them, accompanied by the few remaining crickets of the season. The tread Adam was pulling on grew until he could wrap it around his finger. Ronan thought about swatting him away, but he’d grown entranced by watching Adam’s long fingers work. They were quiet and still for so long after that Ronan had almost thought that they were incapable of leaving the moment they’d been frozen in. 

Then, Adam’s hands were under his shirt, pushing up and up and for a split second, Ronan thought he understood what Adam meant by the feeling he got when the handprint was touched.  Every single nerve in his body came alive at once. Then his hands came alive. They dove in the space between Adam’s worn t-shirt and his back, climbing up his spine, savoring every inch of skin they claimed. 

Adam shuddered under him, and Ronan thought Adam was feeling it too. Then Adam whimpered and tried to squirm away. His face screamed  _painpainpain_ in a way Ronan had only seen before.

His hands immediately flew away, held up in surrender as Adam scrambled to the other side of the bed. He watched helplessly as Adam twitched and flinched and dragged his shirt over his head, exposing the full length of the mark on his back. It had grown down past the line of Adam’s boxers. The band cut right through it and Ronan eyed it worriedly. He watched as Adam’s fingers peeked out around his side, searching for the edges of the mark. Adam couldn’t quite reach, but Ronan wasn’t about to touch of help without explicit permission.

“Shit,” Ronan said. Adam groaned and slumped forward, elbows pressed to his knees.

“Shit,” he agreed. 

  

* * *

When Ronan closed his eyes, he’d been watching Adam’s back.  They were at the Barns. Ronan had been surprised that Adam wanted to come back after Ronan’s last slip-up, but he didn’t argue, didn’t mention his own failings. He wanted Adam there more than anything else. Adam had been quiet and distant, but he had been there. That was the best Ronan was going to get. When they went to bed, the back of Adam’s shirt rode up. Ronan could see the dark line of the mark. It worried him, but Adam didn’t want to talk about it and Ronan felt he’d done enough damage for the time-being. He didn’t say anything, just let Adam sleep and lost himself in his thoughts.

When Ronan opened his eyes, Adam was gone. 

He threw himself out of bed, tripped over the blankets, and raced over to the other side of the bed. No sign of Adam. Ronan started cursing, a long string that Adam might have called poetic. Ronan didn’t feel poetic, he felt like his heart was going to burst out of his chest. 

On the way out of his bedroom, Ronan stubbed his toe on the doorframe. On the way down the stairs, he missed a step and cracked his head against the wall. On his way to the door, he slid on a throw rug and nearly fell face-first into the hardwood. On his way out the door, he nearly tripped over Adam, sitting on the top step of the porch, staring up at the night sky. 

“Shit-fuck-goddammit Adam—” 

Adam didn’t look at him. He kept his eyes trained upwards. Ronan groaned and fell into the space beside him, hands rubbing over his face.

“You fucking goddamn stupid moron—”

“That’s kind of redundant.”

“You’re damn right it is, you fucking—”

“Shh.” 

Ronan dragged his hands down his face and let out a long sigh. Adam’s head was tilted delicately, the long curve of his neck highlighted by the moonlight. Every part of his face looked fragile. Ronan fell back on his hands and tried to spot the mark on the back of Adam's neck, but in the shadow couldn’t see it. It didn’t really matter anyway. Adam was still here. 

They sat in silence for a while. The crickets under the porch chirped every now and then, a soft song on a still night. 

“It’s not going to get better, probably” Adam’s soft voice cut through the quiet. Ronan sat up and turned to look at him. Adam’s hands fell from his lap to grip the edge of the porch. 

Ronan looked up at the night sky. “Ok.” 

Adam slumped forward and rubbed a hand over his eyes. The hand fell and returned to its place on the porch. The light of the moon cast over Adam’s clean, blank neck. In this light, he looked pale, even if he was tanned and freckled. Ronan let out a long breath. 

“It’s never going to make sense.” 

“Ok.”

Ronan folded his hand over Adam’s, tracing his fingers over the prominent knuckles before pushing between each of Adam’s fingers. His hand was cold, a combination of bad circulation and sitting for who knows how long outside at night. After a moment, Ronan could feel Adam’s grip relax.

“I don’t expect you to understand it. But I want you to be here.” 

As he thought, Ronan let the pads of his fingers work over the back of Adam’s hand, tracing up and down Adam’s fingers and over his knuckles again. Adam had beautiful hands. They were big and bony and graceful, and they were Ronan’s to touch. As long as he had that, had Adam by his side, he didn’t need anything else.

“Yea, ok.” 

Adam looked at him like he didn’t expect anything, yet had been given the world. Ronan loved and hated that look. He pulled Adam’s hand to his lips.

“I’ll be here.”

Ronan pressed a kiss to Adam’s palm, and like that, Ronan had the world. 

**Author's Note:**

> I almost named this "The one where Adam gets abducted by aliens", but that would have been misleading.
> 
> Sometimes you have an idea, but you don't know how to write that idea, and then you write that idea anyway and aren't super satisfied with it, but you're never going to get it right...and here we are.


End file.
